Howard Beale revisited | Power Line

Howard Beale revisited | Power Line
"With time on our hands, we are revisiting books and movies that may be seen in the light cast by the Wuhan virus or the lockdowns responding to it. 

...To these I now add the famous rant by Howard Beale (Peter Finch) in the film Network (1976), written by Paddy Chayefsky, directed by Sidney Lumet. 

TCM played the film last night as part of its 2020 stay-at-home Classic Film Festival. 

Not having seen the movie for a few years, I thought the rant had a new resonance. 
Acclaimed UBS anchor Howard Beale delivers it in the immediate aftermath of notice that his employment was terminated by network executives:

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

...Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

Even if it is slightly dated, that rant seems to partake of the timeless quality of the opening of A Tale of Two Cities. The video is below.